Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has thrown his support behind the Brave browser and the Basic Attention Token (BAT) project, adding a well-known name to the growing list of technologists arguing that the modern web is built on a bad bargain.
The internet enthusiast and philosopher published a post titled "The two problems of computer technology" on his personal website, covering his concerns about internet security and the increasing monopolization of the web by a handful of established entities.
Sanger, who is also Chief Information Officer for the decentralized web encyclopedia Everipedia, gets straight to the point about the services we are offered — computation on our desktops, search engines, social media platforms, and so on. They are given to us for free, or so we would like to think. The catch is that we pay with our data, which in truth is an extremely lopsided trade-off that works in favor of the monopolies collecting it.
His indictment of the behavior of centralized entities is unsparing. As he puts it, the threat to our privacy undermines something basic about how the technology is supposed to serve us rather than exploit us.
The two problems, as Sanger frames them
Sanger's argument splits into two related failures of the current model.
The first is security and privacy. When a small number of companies mediate most of what we do online, they accumulate enormous amounts of personal data. That concentration is itself a risk: it makes users the product, and it creates single points of failure that are attractive targets. The "free" service is only free because the data extracted from it is worth far more than the cost of providing it.
The second is monopolization. A handful of firms control search, browsing, and social media. That concentration reduces competition, narrows choice, and gives those firms outsized influence over what information people see and how they see it.
Why Brave and BAT
Sanger's endorsement of Brave follows from that critique. The Brave browser blocks third-party trackers and ads by default, which directly addresses the privacy leakage he describes. Its Basic Attention Token model then proposes an alternative to the surveillance-advertising economy: instead of advertisers paying platforms to track users, users can opt into privacy-respecting ads and are rewarded in BAT for their attention, with a share flowing to the publishers and creators they support.
Whether or not that specific token model succeeds, the underlying point is the one Sanger is making: the current arrangement, in which attention and data are harvested without meaningful consent or compensation, is not the only way the web could work.
A recurring theme
Sanger is not alone in this. Over the past several years, a steady stream of technologists — including some who helped build the early web — have voiced similar concerns about centralization and data extraction. What makes his intervention notable is his history: as a co-founder of one of the internet's most-used resources, he is not an outsider throwing stones. He is someone who helped shape the open web arguing that it has drifted a long way from its original promise.
His conclusion is blunt, and it doubles as the headline advice: if you are uncomfortable with that trade-off, one of the simplest concrete steps you can take is to stop using the browser that does the most to enable it.